Chinese Spy Balloons Are Bad. Republican Screeching Is Worse.
Sit your ass down, DJ. You're not going to shoot eleven miles into the air with your AR-15.
Unemployment is down to 3.4 percent, 517,000 jobs were created in January, and inflation seems finally to be easing. These are good stories for President Joe Biden, so naturally Republicans want to talk nonsense about a Chinese weather balloon. And the media is only too happy to oblige!
"Did it drop and disperse surveillance products powered by solar energy to allow unlimited surveillance," wondered Fox's Maria Bartiromo, whose singular dedication to being the dumbest working journalist at a major network remains unchallenged. Rep. James Comer, the new chair of House Oversight and someone who needs flashcards to be stupid, went even further: "My concern is that the federal government obviously doesn't know what's in that balloon. Is that bioweapons in that balloon? Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?"
The balloon is full of solar-powered bioweapons! Or maybe surveillance fentanyl! Why didn't Biden shoot it down over Topeka?!?!?!!!1!
It must be exhausting to be this moronic. And God knows Peepaw Pisspants needs a nap!
https://truthsocial.com/users/realDonaldTrump/stat...
Here on Planet Earth, none of this makes a lick of sense. Even if you discount the Chinese line that this is a simple weather balloon blown off course, the reality is that China has spy satellites and drones — and so do we! There is no way of knowing why China chose to float this thing over America on the eve of a planned visit between Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and President Xi, but the doomed dirigible caused major diplomatic embarrassment, and Blinken has now canceled his trip. If this was a ploy to make President Biden look weak, then it failed spectacularly everywhere but on Fox News.
There's also the inconvenient fact that China did the exact same thing multiple times during the Trump administration. So much for the boast that no one would never have dared encroach on American air space with that manly specimen of decaying blubber and petty grievance channel surfing in the Oval Office. Republicans have been reduced to shouting NUH UH and blaming Barack Obama, all the while counseling their patriotic followers to shoot pointlessly into the air while standing under it.
Reuters reports that the balloon looked to be deliberately hovering over sensitive military targets, something which they hadn't seen Chinese balloons do before. Similarly, the New York Times suggests that the advantage of balloons over satellites is their ability to "hover over a site far longer and [they] can pick up radio, cellular and other transmissions that cannot be detected from space," something the Biden administration anticipated and ordered the affected military installations to prepare for.
No one knows exactly what the balloon was doing, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if the Biden administration had taken it down over land and harmed one hair on the head of a goat grazing in East Asscrack the same Republicans cursing his lack of courage would be howling for impeachment based on his reckless endangerment of human life. According to Reuters, the military cleared the airspace above Billings, Montana, on Wednesday, but then decided not to risk shooting the thing down over land — something the Kurvy Kouch Brain Trust at Fox insists is a sign of dereliction of duty by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As soon as the craft reached the Atlantic, it was hit by a Sidewider missile fired by an F-22 fighter jet dispatched from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. The debris field stretches some seven miles, most of it in shallow waters off the coast of South Carolina where we can recover the parts and possibly assess what it was doing.
Make no mistake, this is a serious incursion that raises questions that don't fit into a soundbite that can be replayed for partisan advantage. As the Times's David Sanger points out, China seems to have miscalculated badly, and then had no means to defuse the diplomatic crisis once unleashed. We've now got their balloon, and they've got egg on their faces. But there are no rational policy discussions to be had with a party reborn in the image of a spray-painted game show host obsessed with scoring points in an endless cycle of faux outrage.
This is no way to run a country. And yet ... what other choice do we have?
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Oh Damn, Joe Biden Is Bringing Brittney Griner Home
Wonderful news to wake up to.
Well good morning to the Biden administration, which has apparently figured out how to do some diplomacy with the world's vilest, most garbage national leader.
WNBA star Brittney Griner has been released, just weeks after she was transferred to a Russian penal colony. In exchange, we gave Russia an arms dealer named Viktor Bout. We can't wait to read all the hot takes from conservative white Americans about why ACTUALLY that guy was too dangerous to prisoner swap and we should have just left the Black lesbian to rot in a Russian labor camp instead.
Brittney Griner, the WNBA star who was held for months in Russian prisons on drug charges, was released Thursday in a one-for-oneprisoner swap for international arms dealer Viktor Bout, CBS News learned early Thursday from a U.S. official. The one-for-one exchange agreement negotiated with Moscow in recent weeks was given final approval byPresident Biden within justthe last week, according to sources familiar with the deal. The swap, first reported by CBS News, took place on Thursday in the United Arab Emirates.
This morning President Biden was awake in the Oval Office bright and early with Vice President Kamala Harris and Griner's wife Cherelle, and they've been in contact with Brittney, who will be medically evaluated and so forth.
\u201cMoments ago I spoke to Brittney Griner.\n \nShe is safe.\nShe is on a plane.\nShe is on her way home.\u201d— President Biden (@President Biden) 1670505284
President Biden spoke this morning to announce the news. He said Griner is in good spirits. Cherelle also talked. It was pretty great.
We mentioned that we are excited about hot takes from MAGA trash about how this particular Russian criminal Viktor Bout is too valuable to trade for Griner. And we say that because we are. Those will be some really good and well-formed opinions from thoughtful people. And we know they'll be coming because Donald Trump has already spent time trashing the idea of trading Griner for Bout, because of how Trump is a racist piece of human excrement.
Here's what he told some MAGA radio hacks back in the summer:
She went in there loaded up with drugs into a hostile territory where they’re very vigilant about drugs. They don’t like drugs. And she got caught. And now we’re supposed to get her out — and she makes, you know, a lot of money, I guess. We’re supposed to get her out for an absolute killer and one of the biggest arms dealers in the world. Killed many Americans. Killed many people. And he’s gonna get a free card and we’re gonna get her. She knew you don’t go in there loaded up with drugs, and she admitted it. I assume she admitted it without too much force because it is what it is, and it certainly doesn’t seem like a very good trade, does it? He’s absolutely one of the worst in the world, and he’s gonna be given his freedom because a potentially spoiled person goes into Russia loaded up with drugs.
Go fuck yourself, traitor.
TRAITOR: Trump Pretty Sure US Should Let ‘Spoiled’ Brittney Griner Rot In Russian Prison
In the months leading up to this, there had been talk that the White House wanted to trade Bout for both Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan, who's been in prison in Russia for four years on espionage charges the US government says are bullshit. Apparently part of the breakthrough came when the proposal turned into each country returning one prisoner. We also look forward to the MAGA trash hot takes that Donald Trump would have definitely been able to get both prisoners back. (Can't imagine what he might have given Vladimir Putin in return.)
Of course, the Biden administration also completed a successful prisoner swap back in April for former Marine Trevor Reed. Hopefully the Whelan situation can be sorted ASAP. Biden said this morning that Russia is "sadly" treating the Paul Whelan case "differently" from Griner's, for bullshit reasons, but he personally guaranteed in his address this morning that they aren't giving up on that one.
CBS News has much, much more on the negotiations that led to today's historic events. For today let's just be happy for Brittney Griner and her wife and be glad we have a president who gives a shit.
[CBS News]
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Marjorie Taylor Greene Gives Putin Preview Of What It's Gonna Be Like Come January
How much will this shit matter? Remains to be seen.
Before the midterms, Greg Sargent had an article in the Washington Post about how Congress could "crazyproof" things for America in the lame duck session in the event of a Republican takeover. One of the items on the to-do list would be to lock in funding for Ukraine for a long time, to keep Republicans who are literally siding with the enemy (Vladimir Putin) from being able to cripple Ukraine or even give off the perception that American support might be wavering. How many of that type of Republican exists in Congress? Hard to tell, honestly.
Obviously, there is a pro-Russia caucus, which is also the most extreme MAGA caucus.
Kevin McCarthy: Vote For Republicans If You Hate Ukraine!
MAGA Republicans Gonna Investigate Biden For That Nuclear War He Started With Russia
Your Two-Week Reminder That Putin REALLY Wants Republicans To Win The Midterms
The good news is that Putin did not get what he wanted. There was no red wave. It was more like a red skidmark. Democrats kept the Senate, and Republicans will "control" the House, in the most uncontrollable way possible. It will be a technical majority, but that majority will basically be Marjorie Taylor Greene and whatever fart clouds follow her around. Have fun with that, Kevin McCarthy!
Regardless, it's not ideal. There will be a lot like this video of Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer, an absolute dumbfuck among men, who got so mad yesterday that reporters didn't want to take their pants off and fap angrily about Hunter Biden along with the rest of the Republican Hunter Biden Angry Fapping Coalition:
\u201cComer doesn't want to talk about anything but Hunter Biden\u201d— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1668698666
And there will be a lot like this video, which is Marjorie Taylor Greene openly siding with Russia in the genocidal child-murdering war it started against Ukraine, while literally trying to say the "invasion" at the southern US border is worse than what Russia has done, because Russia has only invaded with 82,000 people.
None— Stephanie Shultz \u262e\ufe0f (@Stephanie Shultz \u262e\ufe0f) 1668719975
She refers to our "proxy war with Russia," a conspiracy theory that shot right out of Tucker Carlson's ass crack. She whines that five million people have crossed our border illegally, as if all Americans are racist pigs who think brown-skinned Spanish-speaking immigrants are an evil worse than actual genocidal invaders.
Obviously Marjorie Taylor Greene is a bad person, one of the worst an American pregnancy has ever produced. And obviously most Americans don't agree with her.
And it remains to be seen whether vile grandstanding such as hers will actually end up hurting the innocent people of Ukraine, or whether likely eventual Speaker Kevin McCarthy will just let her run her mouth and then go make a deal with Democrats to approve whatever Ukraine funding the Senate passes.
But Russia hears it, loud and clear. This shit is going to be all over their TV.
We do hope the rest of the world is ready to tune this crap out, just like most of America is about to do with the House's endless upcoming investigations into how often Hunter Biden fucks and why his dad still loves him more than Donald Trump loves Don Jr.
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Sean Hannity Knows What He'd Do If He Was Poland, He'd Be Like BAM! BAM! And Russia'd Be Like OH SH*T, YO!
War strategies.
Good news! It looks like that missile that fell on Poland yesterday and killed two people was not from the Russians, even though it was Russian-made. Lotta Russian-made stuff floating around those parts. NATO's secretary general and the president of Poland say it likely came from Ukraine, that Ukraine was defending itself from a Russian attack, and a missile landed in Poland accidentally.
It would have been a big deal, obviously. If Russia hits a NATO country and NATO chooses to acknowledge it as such, then NATO would have to respond, on account of that whole "attack on one is an attack on all" thing. And if Vladimir Putin were to try some shit to distract/escalate, the timing could possibly make sense, what with the liberation of Kherson in Ukraine, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says is the "beginning of the end" of the war. Also, Democrats kept the United States Senate and Republicans only hung on by the tiniest of threads in the House, which means funding for Ukraine is probably more secure than Putin was hoping it would be.
But they're saying the Polish strike was an accident.
Let's let that be a lesson about jumping the gun. Hey, we even jumped the gun a little bit when we heard a Russian missile had hit Poland, when we immediately were like "U HAPPY NOW, TULSI GABBARD?" We don't feel bad about it, because she can take a hike, but we're willing to acknowledge it.
Know who REALLY jumped the gun? Sean Hannity, who was on the radio when the news broke, and had hardly any information about what had happened, but that didn't matter because he was already in Russia, retaliating. We have video:
Haha, we are hilarious. (If you do not know all internet traditions.)
Here is the audio, because it was on the radio:
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): This is now a NATO problem, but it's also a Poland problem. If I was Poland, I would immediately strike back at Russian forces in Russia. And you say, "Hannity, you're going to start a nuclear war." No, I'm not looking to start a nuclear war. I'm looking to prevent a nuclear war. I'm looking to prevent this from now getting far worse. The only thing that should matter here is that there be a quick and appropriate response.
Correction: It would have been a NATO problem if it was a confirmed hostile strike on Poland by Russia. It was not time yet for Poland to "immediately strike back at Russian forces in Russia," no matter how much Sean Hannity was enjoying this game of "If I Was Poland." Thank God he's not!
And you say "Hannity, you're going to start a nuclear wear." And the answer is yes, he could have, because if he had done that and it turned out the Russian strike was a mistake, then Hannity/Poland's strike on Russia would have been the first strike.
Of course, in one way we are happy to hear a Fox News primetime host be so willing to hold Russia accountable for its actions. He should have some friendly dad chats with the guy in the timeslot next to his.
For some reason that Hannity "If I Was Poland" monologue reminds us of how Hannity talks about his MMA workouts.
“We have days we call ‘keeping it real,’ ” he said. “And keeping it real is like this guy who’s so big and so strong, and he’s coming up to me all throughout an hour-and-15-minute session and putting me in chokeholds, seeing how I respond to a gun to my head. You know, how do I deal with blades? And then another day is pain day, and then literally you put out your arms, ‘Boom, boom, boom.’ ” He mimed a hammer-punching motion against his forearm and stomach. “It’s made me stronger than I’ve ever been in my life.”
Now enjoy these videos of Sean Hannity explaining more about how to be an MMA fighter, which he is:
\u201cHannity can't stop, won't stop pretending he's an MMA fighter:\n\n"This is what I know from my martial arts training. If I put you in what\u2019s called a rear-naked choke...you are going to drop to your knees in 15 seconds."\u201d— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona) 1591062219
Never, ever will not be funny.
OPEN THREAD!
[Media Matters / New York Times]
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